


A Glove Upon That Hand

by Fire_Sign



Series: Phrack Fucking Fridays [24]
Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: F/M, pff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-20 20:13:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15542118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fire_Sign/pseuds/Fire_Sign
Summary: However Phryne Fisher had imagined her day going as she’d taken her morning tea and toast, dealing with an injured detective inspector had most certainly not been amongst the possibilities.Some ridiculous PFF smut





	A Glove Upon That Hand

**Author's Note:**

> Soooo, quite a few notes in this one.  
> (1) Today is the second anniversary of Phrack Fucking Friday, which is crazy. I'm so happy that so many people embraced that little idea, which wasn't even mine.  
> (2) I have been sitting on this fic for ages. It was inspired by a prompt from the third ficathon that was actually written TWICE, once by the prompter and once for the ficathon. But the prompt was so good it nagged at me and I wrote my own take on the prompt: "Before they become lovers, Phryne is tending to a wound on Jack and accidentally discovers one of his sensitive spots, and the discovery (and his response) turns her on big-time. Maybe she even remembers it later when they have become lovers..." I hadn't planned to post, which lasted until a month of chaos left me without a PFF. I am, deep down, a narcissist. Try to contain your shock. ♥  
> (3) The other two versions are [Sweet Spot by deedeeinfj](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13323648) and [Tap Twice by PromisesArePieCrust](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13506969). Go check out both, they are fab.  
> (4) Title is from Romeo and Juliet, and is 100% "I've been travelling and cleaning all day and I need a title in the next five minutes" and will hopefully not DETER people from reading. It's smut, so I'm probably safe. _“See how she leans her cheek upon her hand./O, that I were a glove upon that hand/That I might touch that cheek!”_  
>  (5) Shameless plug, but [I am running another ficathon](http://firesign23.tumblr.com/post/176366427219/phryne-ficathon-4). Signups are open until August 28th, and details are in the Tumblr post.  
> (6) This is getting posted early (it's Friday here, but barely) because I will have a post-holiday hangover tomorrow and will likely flail weakly in the general direction of ao3 and read all the other smut while half asleep and wondering why I ever leave the house.

However Phryne Fisher had imagined her day going as she’d taken her morning tea and toast, dealing with an injured detective inspector had most certainly not been amongst the possibilities.

She’d been having a perfectly _lovely_ conversation with the suspect when Jack had arrived, and Edgar Galen had repaid Jack for the pleasure with a hell of a knock on the head before escaping out the window. As she had a reasonably good idea where the man would head and no inclination to break her ankle—her shoes were spectacular, but they were also new and not terribly practical for running, she really must think those things through if she was going to make a habit of investigating—she’d stayed behind to aid the injured officer.

“Sit down, Jack,” Phryne scolded, helping the reluctant inspector off the floor and towards the nearest chair. “That’s the sort of head injury that kills men, and quite frankly under the circumstances I’m willing to bet that I’d be the first suspect.”

“If you do end up causing my death, I doubt you would opt for something as inelegant as a bump on the head,” Jack said dryly, lowering himself gingerly into the seat. “Especially not when an apoplexy would do the job with so little effort.”

Phryne studied his face; she told herself it was part of the medical examination—his pupils were fine, to her relief—but the truth was simply that she wanted to know whether he was joking. In their short acquaintance she had begun to suspect that beneath the staid exterior there was a wicked sense of humour, amongst other intrigues. There it was—a twitch of his lips and a slight crinkle around his eyes, there and gone in an instant.

“Now Jack, I can’t be held responsible for your failure to embrace the many benefits of having a lady detective on your side,” she grinned, reaching out to check his injury. The knock had dislodged his carefully coiffed hair, and it was surprisingly soft beneath her fingertips. “Especially one with medical training.”

He winced as she palpated his scalp—he had a good lump, though the skin wasn’t broken—but still managed a look of curiosity.

“Medical training?”

“Ambulance driver,” she explained cheerfully, “during the war.”

Another wince. “That explains quite a bit, actually.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment, as you no doubt intended,” she said. “What were you doing here?”

He did a slow blink, then arched an eyebrow.

“What was I doing interviewing a suspect in my murder investigation?”

“When you put it like that….”

“The real question is what are you doing here?”

Phryne widened her eyes and smiled innocently; all it did was make him narrow his own in suspicion. “I had, perhaps, heard that Mr. Galen would be here and might have some information about my client’s missing necklace?”

“Collins.”

It wasn’t a question. Phryne briefly considered prevaricating—it wouldn’t do to let the man think he had the upper hand—but merely shrugged.

“He came around for a third time this week,” she said, then leant in slightly and gave a conspiratorial smile. “I suspect informing me of Galen’s location was merely an excuse to speak to Dot again. Not that the poor boy managed to get more than half a dozen words out.”

“He has been making noises about inviting Miss Williams’ to the Firemen and Policemen’s Ball,” Jack said; there was something that looked suspiciously like mischief in his eyes. As well as being a convenient professional contact and an aesthetic pleasure, Phryne found she quite _liked_ the man. Shame he was married, and seemingly not the sort to dally. Still, there were plenty of other conquests to be had.

“He hasn’t succeeded yet,” Phryne laughed, finally satisfied with her examination and pulling her hands away from his hair. “I’m not sure I was ever _that_ innocent.”

“Me either,” Jack admitted, and the chagrin in his expression was oddly endearing, “but perhaps that’s just wishful thinking.”

“I’d bet you charmed the birds from the trees in your youth,” Phryne said, tilting his jaw up with one finger to examine the scrapes on his face in better lighting. “If I ever meet Mrs. Robinson, I’ll have to ask her. Follow my finger.”

He did as instructed, and Phryne was almost satisfied.

“Hand,” she directed, palm up. He looked doubtful, and Phryne rolled her eyes. “If I had ulterior motives, I wouldn’t bother trying to hide them. You’re looking a tad woozy, and I’d rather you not swoon when you stand up. And you’re certainly not driving like this.”

“I’m fine, Miss Fisher.”

“Hand.”

He offered it grudgingly; Phryne caught his wrist, turning his watch—a trench watch, she realised, and it was an unexpectedly familiar sight—to face her, her thumb stroking against his skin in search of a pulse point.

It was, she would reflect later, remarkable how very mundane it was. A quick touch, a sip of breath, a thudding pulse; she looked at him, some part of her wondering if it was a reaction born of pain, and felt her stomach drop out. He was watching her like some startled creature, pupils blown wide and his breath catching in his chest. She’d had many men in her bed, knew the signs of arousal, recognised the current between them for what it was. Saw the sheer vulnerability in his eyes.

She dropped his hand, stepping back.

“You’re fine,” she said. “Must have a hard head.”

She watched him swallow awkwardly, his tongue darting out to wet his lips. Almost unwillingly she imagined the feel of his lips against hers, had the urge to trace the shape of his mouth with her tongue. It passed quickly—he was a married man, a professional contact, not under consideration.

He stood, somewhat abashed, and gave a small cough.

“Thank you, Miss Fisher,” he said, giving a small smile. “I will never again underestimate the uses of a lady detective with medical training.”

She laughed in delight, the tension gone as quickly as it had appeared. There was no reason this couldn’t become a rather marvelous friendship.

“I can only hope you don’t require my services with any frequency. I’m far more interested in investigations nowadays. Now come, I’ll drive you to the station.”

He eased himself up and allowed her to drive him to the station in the Hispano, grumbling the entire way about traffic violations and the statistics surrounding motorcar fatalities. And she’d been trying so hard to drive sedately, too.

In the days and weeks and months that followed, she touched him often—an arm insinuated around his bicep; bodies pressed into proximity, by necessity or for pleasure; the steadiness of his hand in hers as he held her steady on a stage, across a table, boarding a boat; the certainty with which he caught her, his coat beneath her fingers as she wept at an unmarked grave; the trail of his finger against her neck, barely there and branding her; undone ties and straightened lapels—until it seemed second nature. She flirted with him, mercilessly at times, a game neither one of them appeared to wish to concede. She came to know him well, his flaws and his strengths and his favourite sandwich.

Sometimes—not often, but sometimes—she would catch a glimpse of his wrist as he wrote, or gestured animatedly as he relayed some story in her parlour, or offered his hand for a palm reading, and she would wonder what he would do if she were to raise it to her lips, feather kisses against the sensitive skin, graze her teeth and her tongue against the pulse point. Whether it was a one-off reaction, a combination of injury and intimacy, or whether she could bring him undone with such a simple gesture. But as many ways as she liked to goad him, it was a testament to the respect she bore him—as a man, as a friend, as a police officer—that she never tried.

But damn if she didn’t wonder.

———

She was waiting when he disembarked the boat; despite weeks of telegrams exchanged, it wasn’t until he saw her waiting at the bottom of the ramp—and clearly she had charmed someone into allowing her that sort of proximity—that the full madness of this endeavour hit him.

“Miss Fisher.”

“Jack.”

They were paused two steps apart, both of them grinning like fools.

“Pleasant journey?”

“More than the last one.”

She laughed. “I can imagine.”

Silence fell, the air between them practically bubbling with happiness. There was no doubt they would close the gap, but the moment was so joyfully perfect that Jack couldn’t bear to break it.

“That’s my favourite tie,” she said casually.

That surprised him—it was one of his darker ones, blue with silver fronds. Hardly remarkable.

“Do you often catalogue my ties?”

“Observation is vital in our line of work, Jack,” she scolded, reaching out to tug his tie and draw him closer. He could see the freckles across her nose. “And this is a particularly… memorable specimen.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. And this time I presume there are no inconvenient fathers-in-law around to interrupt?”

 _Oh_.

“Former father-in-law,” Jack corrected with a smile. “And no. Any family or members of your household?”

“No.”

“Murder?”

“Just kiss me, Jack.”

She didn’t actually give him a chance, her hand still on his tie pulling him closer, her mouth firm on his. She kissed with the same confidence and skill as she did everything, and when she eventually pulled away there was—Lord help him—a _glint_ in her eyes.

“Yes, that will do very well.”

As he hadn’t quite recovered his breath, he hoped the arched eyebrow would ask the necessary questions for him. Which, thankfully, it did.

“It’s not murder,” she said defensively. “And I did try to find another way around it.”

“But?”

“I might, perhaps, require you to play my fiancé while we’re in London.”

The pitch of her voice was amusingly high, and he tried to keep a straight expression.

“Phryne—”

“Don’t give me that look, Jack.”

“What look?”

“Like you expected nothing less. It’s most off-putting. And worse, it’s absurdly endearing,” she leant towards his ear, dropping her voice. “At this rate I’ll have no desire to leave the hotel room. Which really can’t be done when we have a case to investigate.”

Jack sighed. “Will I at least have a chance to deposit my luggage somewhere securely?”

“I brought the motorcar. And we will have to stop for lunch with Marjorie—she’s our client, there’s some very… questionable details going on with her wedding arrangements, but I can’t seem to get answers without being betrothed myself—but I fully intend to ravish you at least twice before we really get started.”

It was said with such flippant certainty that he actually blushed, a state which did not go unnoticed by Phryne. She smiled coyly and tugged at his tie once more.

“I am glad you came,” she said. “Sincerely. And if you really don’t wish—”

He cupped her head and kissed her again, nearly dislodging her cloche in the process.

“It has been weeks since you’ve meddled in one of my cases,” he teased, “I haven’t known what to do with myself.”

“This is our case, Jack. And I think you’ll find that I never meddle.” She paused, tilting her head in consideration. “Well, very rarely.”

“Will I be myself, or some dashing rake from the Antipodes?”

Phryne rolled her eyes.

“Yourself,” she said firmly. “It will be hard enough to convince people I’ve lost my mind and gotten engaged, there’s no need to add complications to it. And I’m hardly the type to be taken in by a fool.”

“Fair enough.”

She reached out to lace her fingers through his, squeezing his hand.

“And besides, I do want my friends to meet _you_.”

It was a simple thing, but the best moments always were. He smiled.

“Lead the way then, Miss Fisher.”

She held is hand as they headed towards the motorcar; a porter was already there with Jack’s luggage, and the driver was having a smoko nearby. The trunks were loaded and the two detectives slid into the back seat to wait for the driver’s return. Phryne sat herself far closer to Jack than was strictly required by the size of the seat; Jack briefly wondered whether she had some ulterior, prurient motive, but she merely kept his hand in hers, her gaze focused on their intertwined fingers. From time to time she absently stroked her thumb over his and he would return the gesture with a gentle squeeze of her fingers. The whole thing felt absurdly chaste, but the intimacy was unmistakable.

Of course, Phryne Fisher was hardly one to keep things chaste for long. The driver had barely left the docks when she turned his hand, palm upward, and pulled her hand away. She stroked his fingers and palm softly, stopping just above the wrist; Jack wondered if it was coincidence, but the look of curiosity on her face was unmistakable—her eyes were sharp, her bottom lip worried between her teeth. Eventually she seemed to reach some decision, and one fingernail was gently scraped against his wrist; Jack shivered, the anticipation heightening the experience, and Phryne gave a soft exhalation that sounded far more like satisfaction than it had any right to.

Content with whatever it was she was investigating, she pulled her hand away once more to adjust her cloche, and proceeded to fill Jack in on the specifics of the investigation—Marjorie was an old school chum who had been in the midst of planning an obscenely expensive wedding, only to suspect that her fiancé was not all he appeared to be. A suggestion of collusion with various wedding vendors was afoot, all of whom were “too busy with clients” to speak to someone not planning a wedding. As she explained the key players and details she had uncovered she would stroke his wrist, seemingly at random and without intention; by the time they arrived at the restaurant where they were to meet Marjorie for lunch, Jack had what could easily be the most inappropriate erection of his life. As he’d known Phryne for over a year, that was quite an accomplishment. Thank heavens for heavy coats.

He made his way into the restaurant and to the table without too much embarrassment—there was the undeniable fact that Phryne was clearly aware of his predicament and had decided that appropriate response was to send him lascivious looks, but nobody else seemed to notice, and he introduced himself to Marjorie with a reasonable amount of decorum. And the tablecloth hid all manner of sins so long as he pulled his chair close enough.

Slightly less fortunately, Phryne decided that the cover of the table gave her reason to be merciless, and she continued her assault on his person whenever possible. And the pretense of engagement gave her far too many possibilities; a nudge of his foot with hers, a hand on his thigh as she leant closer, always returning to the sensitive skin of his wrist. By the end of the meal Jack was approximately two seconds from dragging her into the nearest dark corner and demonstrating the _precise_ extent of the predicament her teasing had caused. Even if that was letting her win this particular battle. It was only sheer stubbornness that saw him out of the restaurant and back in the motorcar, where he decided that the only option was to go on the offensive—the short drive to the hotel was mostly taken up by his lips on her neck, his hand beneath her blouse, and a lot of internal reassurance that the chances of being recognised, in London, from inside a moving vehicle, were astronomically small.

When they arrived at their destination, Phryne was looking remarkably glassy-eyed, and more than a little dishevelled. A state that saw them through directing Jack’s trunks onto a trolley to be brought to the room by the porter, the retrieval of a second set of keys for the room, and into the lift.

And it was there that Jack’s luck ran out. Phryne seemed to rally, and rather than opt for full seduction mode she merely held his hand and laid her head against his shoulder. It was an underhanded ploy, and from the stroke of her thumb against his wrist she knew it. His prolonged arousal heightened his senses, making every waft of perfume stronger, every tickle of her hair against his neck softer, every touch of his wrist so damned erotic that he was genuinely contemplating the chances of spending himself before getting to the room.

_Police reports, the smell of the cells, every single interruption they had had to endure—_

“I bought some lovely French underwear,” she whispered in his ear as they arrived on the correct floor and the lift operator opened the doors, “but I’m not wearing them.”

He groaned and dragged her off the lift and towards their hotel room. He’d given up entirely on maintaining his dignity and just hoped they didn’t cross paths with another guest—fortune was on his side, and soon enough the door to their room was closed behind them. He grasped her hips and pulled her close, his mouth to her ear.

“Wicked woman,” he hissed, and she laughed, the movement of her body against his taking his perilously close to the edge. Even the brush of her hand as she unbuttoned his braces had him biting his lip to keep from coming like an adolescent. “Phryne…”

“Jack,” she purred, lowering his boxers, “I could barely keep my hands off you, I wanted you so much—”

“Phryne,” he panted, “I’m not going to—” her hand grazed over his cock, “Oh god, I’m not going to last if you—” she took a half-step backwards and the loss of contact was almost worse than her touch, “ _Fuck_ , Phryne, I’m going to embarrass myself.”

She dropped to her knees, a question in her eyes.

“Darling Jack,” she said, her hands stroking his thighs and her voice calm and sincere, “you won’t embarrass yourself.” He opened his mouth to protest—there was a very good chance he was going to lose control any second, and the warmth of her breath on his cock when she spoke was _not_ helping—but she silenced him with a look. “Let me show you?”

He swallowed hard and nodded, more than a little overwhelmed by the softness in her eyes. Her hot mouth enveloped him, her tongue swirling around his cockhead, a slight suction and he was gone, white light filling his vision and the roar of his blood in his ears.

When he regained his senses he was leaning against the wall, breathing heavily. Phryne was still on her knees, lipstick worn away, her thumb gently stroking the inside of his wrist in a soothing manner.

“Embarrassed?” she asked cheekily.

“I can’t feel my legs.”

She laughed and stood, thumb still at his wrist.

“I will choose to interpret that as a no, then.”

He turned his hand to catch hers, pulling her closer for another kiss. Then he looked over her shoulder, glancing around the suite.

“Which one is the bedroom?” he asked, hoping his voice was steadier than the rest of him felt. “I seem to recall a promise of multiple ravishments.”

She nipped at his ear and stepped back, heading towards the nearest door and leaving a trail of clothing in her wake. He pushed himself off the wall and followed, mind churning with all the possible ways to drive her to distraction. Turnabout was fair play, after all. 

Hours later, both of them exhausted and still entangled in bed, she was on the telephone with one of their suspects of the case. She was bluffing her way through the conversation with remarkable ease—newly engaged, a friend had said that Elizabeth Echolls was the only dressmaker worth speaking to in London, please could she make room in her schedule for Phryne—and Jack watched her in sated admiration; she was arranging an appointment for the following evening when Jack struck, shimmying down the bed to kiss the skin of her hip—she gasped and covered it with a cough, glaring reprovingly at Jack, a small smile belying the reprimand.

Well, he could work with that.


End file.
